Morgon’s Gang of Four: The Beaujolais Rebels Behind Your Natural Wine
Every November, Beaujolais Nouveau arrives with a marketing blitz: the same thin, candy-bright wine, the same celebration of youth, the same bottles emptied before December. It is fine for what it is. But it is not what Beaujolais can be, and four winemakers from the village of Villié-Morgon spent their careers making that case.
They were called the Gang of Four, a name coined by American importer Kermit Lynch after he tasted Marcel Lapierre’s 1989 vintage and understood immediately what he was drinking. The four, Marcel Lapierre, Jean Foillard, Guy Breton, and Jean-Paul Thévenet, were neighbors and friends who had watched industrial methods hollow out one of France’s most storied wine regions. Synthetic chemicals in the vineyards, commercial yeasts in the cellar, heavy filtration and chaptalisation in between. The wines were uniform, efficient, and forgettable, and Beaujolais Nouveau was the commercial peak of that system.
The four went the other direction. Old vines, some 50 to 100 years planted. Organic farming. Native yeasts only. Minimal sulfur. No filtration. The goal was simple and radical at the same time: let the Morgon cru, one of Beaujolais’ ten named villages with genuinely distinctive terroir, speak without interference.
It worked. Beaujolais went from punchline to one of the most sought-after regions in natural wine. More than 300 estates in the area are now organic or converting. Jean Foillard’s wines have been called some of the most consistently fine reds in all of France. Mathieu and Camille Lapierre have continued their father’s work, adding biodynamics. Charly Thévenet has extended the family’s reach into the neighboring Régnié cru.
Marcel Lapierre died in 2010, shortly after finishing the harvest. The other three are still making wine.
Beaujolais Nouveau day is November 19. Before the bottles arrive, find a Morgon. Serve it slightly chilled, around 58 to 62 degrees. Give it 20 minutes open before you pour. It will taste like what Beaujolais actually is when someone takes it seriously.
Next week: the full guide to Morgon, the Gang of Four’s legacy, and the bottles carrying their work forward.
